He was about to come back with something Fred clever but the telephone was ringing.
“Car’s where it always is. I think it has some gas. I’ll keep a tab. Quick question.”
The phone kept ringing.
“Okay.”
“Who gave you that cheek?”
“Woman named Roberta Dreemer,” I said.
“Bubbles,” said Fred. “She’s living hell.”
“I’ve got the mark of the devil,” I said, thinking it was true in more ways than one.
Fred picked up the phone and waved good-bye to me.
“Glaucoma?” he said to whoever was on the other end of the phone.
I didn’t stay to hear the rest. I headed for the white Cutlass.
2
It wasnt far to Flo’s place. I took Fruitville to the Trail, then down to Siesta Drive, made a right, crossed Osprey, and then took a left into Flo Zink’s driveway just before the bridge to Siesta Key. I would have preferred to keep going to the beach and just sit on a bench watching the gulls and pelicans.
There was a small black Toyota in the circular driveway. The white minivan wasn’t there. Flo had lost her license twice in Florida for DUI violations. She hadn’t hurt anyone, but that wasn’t the point and she knew it. Flo had her license back but seldom drove even when ice-clear sober and when she did drive it was the white minivan.
The door was opened before I had a chance to knock.
Flo stood there, denim skirt, blue and red checkerboard shirt, and a glass in her hand. Her hair was white, cut short, and looking frizzy. Flo reminded me of Thelma Ritter, even looked a little like the actress. I told her that once. Her answer had been, “Gus always said I looked like Greer Garson.”
Behind Flo I could hear her stereo blasting from the speakers throughout the house. All she played was country and western music, most of it from decades ago. She liked Roy Acuff, Roy Rogers, and The Sons of the Pioneers. Patsy Cline was, however, her favorite and it was Patsy in the background wailing, “If you loved me half as much as I love you…”
“Let’s get it out of the way before you come in,” she said. “I’ve been drinking. I plan to stop again when you find Adele and bring her home.”
“Can I come in?”
She stepped back and lifted her arm. I stepped in.
Patsy sang, “… you wouldn’t do half the things you do.”
“Can we turn the music down?”
“Why not?” Flo said, leading me into the large living room and heading for the stereo against the wall. She turned a knob and Patsy faded into the background.
“Adele worked this out,” she said. “Set up this Internet music thing, found a radio station in Fort Worth that plays my music, and figured out how to pipe it through the stereo. Adele is smart.”
Flo took a drink and pressed her lips together.
Flo’s home, a large sprawling one-story building with no exterior beauty but a great view of Sarasota Bay, was decorated in early Clint Eastwood. The furniture was ranch western and lots of Stickney. There were Navajo rugs on the wood floors and Hopi blankets on the sofas and chairs. Aside from the rugs and blankets, Flo’s house was dark wood and simple furniture. On the table in the center of the room between a sofa and two chairs sat a genuine Remington of a cowboy on a rearing horse. A stag head with massive antlers looked down at us from one wall.
I sat in one of the chairs. Flo sat on the sofa, one arm draped over the back, the other holding the drink that she looked at from time to time to be sure it existed.
“You want a drink?” she asked.
“I’ve already had a beer this morning,” I said.
Her eyebrows went up.
“Careful there, sad eyes,” she said. “Beer can lead to all sorts of things. Let’s get to it. Adele’s gone, took the van. She’s… what happened to your face?”
“Someone hit me,” I said with a small smile to suggest that such things happen.
“Why?”
“I served her papers.”
“Slap the messenger,” she said with an understanding tilt of her head. “You hit her back?”
I didn’t answer.
“Give me her name and I’ll go kick her ass for you,” she said.
“She’s big,” I said. “And kicking her ass won’t make me feel better. Flo, why am I here?”
“To find Adele,” she said. “I told you.”
“Are you sure she ran away?”
“Drove, been gone three days. Took the van. Left a note. Here.”
She reached into the pocket of her flannel shirt, pulled out a sheet of paper, and handed it to me. It was double folded. I opened it and read: “Flo, I don’t know if I’m coming back. I’ll pay you for the van when I have the money or I’ll return it. There’s something I’ve got to do. I’ll call. You know I love you.” It was signed “Adios, Adele.”
“Why?”
“Maybe she couldn’t take me acting like a mother. I don’t think so. She seemed to like it. Maybe she ran away with Mickey what’s-his-name, works at the Burger King right over there on the Trail. She’s been seeing him. But I’m betting on Conrad Lonsberg.”
“The writer?” I asked.
“Not many other people around here named Conrad Lonsberg, are there?” she said, working on her drink. “Yes, the great Conrad Lonsberg.”
She held up her glass to drink to the name. There wasn’t much left to drink.
I knew Lonsberg had a place in Sarasota. He was seldom seen and never attended any literary parties or gave talks or went to the Sarasota Reading Festival. Once in a long while his photograph would appear in a big magazine, People, Vanity Fair, places like that. But there was never much text.
I had read his classic Fool’s Love when I was about seventeen. I guess almost everyone had read it. It was now over forty years old and still selling along with his two collections of short stories, mostly reprints from the series he did for The New Yorker, and his second novel, Plugged Nickels, which had stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for one hundred twenty weeks. Plugged Nickels came out in 1978. That was the year his wife died. And that was it. I seemed to remember that Lonsberg had moved from someplace east, I think Connecticut, to Sarasota. He had two children, a son and daughter. He gave no interviews, allowed no photographs of his children. Seemed to have no friends and made it clear he wanted minimal contact with the world. Lonsberg was a Sarasota legend. People reported Lonsberg sightings along with Stephen King, Monica Selles, and Jerry Springer glimpses.
I sympathized, empathized, sometimes envied Lonsberg’s decision. I didn’t remember Fool’s Love very well. It was a short novel about a teenage girl from a small town who leaves home and heads across the country to live with her aunt who has a supposedly wild lifestyle. The girl meets all kinds of people on the way and when she finally gets to her aunt finds that the aunt is basically no different from the mother she left behind.
“Lonsberg?” I prompted Flo who was looking up at the stag head.
“Remember when Adele got that story published?” she asked. “First prize, right in City Tempo. Her picture in the newspaper.”
“I remember,” I said.
The story had basically been autobiographical, loose ends tied together by fiction and the names of all the characters changed. I was in the story, sort of. There was a detective hired by the girl’s mother to find her. The detective’s name was Milo Loomis. He was big, tough, and had a sense of humor. No one would recognize me in Milo, but it wasn’t hard to spot her central character, Joan, as Adele. The story was honest. Joan wasn’t spared her responsibility for the things that had happened to her.
“Lonsberg read the story,” said Flo. “A few days after the magazine came out, he called, gave me his name, asked if I was Adele’s mother. Tell you the truth, I didn’t know who the hell Conrad Lonsberg was, but Adele did. She’s been great, Lew. These months… her grades went up. She pretty much stayed home though she worked on the school paper. She started going with this Mickey kid. Seemed okay. Friendly. Things were going great. Then this Lonsberg calls. I sort of remembered the name, I think. He asked if he could talk to Adele. Adele was shaking when she took the phone. Anyway, Lonsberg told Adele that he had read her story and would like to meet her. She stood there holding the phone waiting for me to give her permission.”